How can anyone be proud of being autistic? You've read the statistics. A good majority of us are unemployed, live on social security benefits, don't drive, have very few to no friends, in our 20s and never dated, don't drive, don't go to college. How can anyone be proud of that? Autism makes you unique? Unique don't mean s**t when you're depressed all the time because you have no friends and can't get a job because of your differences or when you're living on your own off of SSI or Medicaid and unemployed. A good majority of us are losers; we're misunderstood by neurotypicals, we're nerds, we have no friends, we work low pay minimum wage job, our only friends are our parents. Some of us don't even parents to help us anymore.

That's the sad truth for many of you. Half of your autistic brothers and sisters will live a life like this because of autism. Yes, even many of you with HFA will live like this. Because you were born different, because you were born with autism. You never could live up to your full potential.

So tell me, how can anyone be proud of being autistic? Because I would cure it if given the opportunity.

No need to be a downer...

I can not be proud or ashamed of something I was born with. That said I do think that if you do not hate your autism or even be proud(not to the point of being delusional) of it you have a better chance of not being one of the statistics cited above. I think that same idea holds true for us as a group. If so many of us did not hate ourselves(for understandable reasons) those statistics would not be as bad

-I do not think anyone (not nearly as often as I would like) plans beyond "let's do work" . . . my crazy brain is capable of planing things better than that.

-I can work 12-14 hour-days with laser focus. My co-workers are like "I don't want 1.5 pay and commissions, I need to do stuff that does not pay me." I am like "do that crap after the season is over . . . why are you not obsessing over this?"

-I noticed that the phone forwarding turned off at EXACTLY 4:00 PM everyday and made our call volume drop like 80-90% for 3-5 hours per day . . . during the crazy all-the-overtime-you-want time of the year. Nigh everyone I told was all like . . . people are eating, or they are in traffic, or we are still getting calls, or that's not my problem. I mean how damned fool silly is this problem? Fixing this little stupid thing could end up making us crazy cash come the crazy season.

-But it does suck when people think that I am up to no good, think that I am lying, or think that I am stealing. Being misread is a real pain.

I see a specialist psychologist every month or so, who told me I can do amazing things, things he can only dream of being capable of. He said someone ought to write a book about me.

Not content with wanting someone else to do a half-baked job of it, I took up his challenge that evening.

6 weeks later, I have a 65536-word (no, I'm not making that up!) manuscript, in which 13 of my 14 chapters cover in pretty intense detail those things that I can do (the other chapter's the introduction). It comes out to 101 A4 pages, and only about 3 or 4 of that total are about "negative" things like meltdowns... the rest is about the strengths my autism has given me.

I've done this while still managing a full-time job, transitioning back to living on my own (which means shopping and cooking, harder for me than most given I have a large number of intolerances to deal with), and renovating my house.

Oh, and about my job? Nearly everyone on my 40-or-so member project team look up to me (the ones that don't have issues with *everyone*, so it's nothing to do with me. For once!). The team manager, who is two levels above me in leadership, comes to me for advice because she knows she won't get the spin like she gets from the others, and she knows I only ever give considered, thoughtful advice based on experience with detecting and managing risks, etc. (which is one of the skills I have from my autism).

I am seeking for my book to be published, I'll maybe post a thread about it closer to the time after it's had a round of editing by someone other than me (that's to make sure the NT's who read it won't get too confused).

I see a specialist psychologist every month or so, who told me I can do amazing things, things he can only dream of being capable of. He said someone ought to write a book about me.

Not content with wanting someone else to do a half-baked job of it, I took up his challenge that evening.

6 weeks later, I have a 65536-word (no, I'm not making that up!) manuscript, in which 13 of my 14 chapters cover in pretty intense detail those things that I can do (the other chapter's the introduction). It comes out to 101 A4 pages, and only about 3 or 4 of that total are about "negative" things like meltdowns... the rest is about the strengths my autism has given me.

I've done this while still managing a full-time job, transitioning back to living on my own (which means shopping and cooking, harder for me than most given I have a large number of intolerances to deal with), and renovating my house.

Oh, and about my job? Nearly everyone on my 40-or-so member project team look up to me (the ones that don't have issues with *everyone*, so it's nothing to do with me. For once!). The team manager, who is two levels above me in leadership, comes to me for advice because she knows she won't get the spin like she gets from the others, and she knows I only ever give considered, thoughtful advice based on experience with detecting and managing risks, etc. (which is one of the skills I have from my autism).

I am seeking for my book to be published, I'll maybe post a thread about it closer to the time after it's had a round of editing by someone other than me (that's to make sure the NT's who read it won't get too confused).

I am a very proud Autistic woman. I guess if I were to base that statement on an anal semantically correct definition, I would probably not feel comfortable stating this. But if you look at how the meaning has evolved when used by different disenfranchised groups in the recent past claiming it i.e Gay Pride, Black Pride, etc., and you google what these particular groups meant by pride, without a doubt, I am filled with overflowing Autistic Pride.

You see, I not only accept my neurology, I embrace it. I KNOW that I am not "less than" and I wear my Autistic Pride jewelry as an opening to shout it out to the world. And if there are no comments on my jewelry [or t-shirt] I will still find a way to bring it up. And do a little educating.

I am just a little old lady. I have endured great suffering because of being Autistic. I have met hundreds of young people who have lived a nightmare because of the treatment they were put through. I want to be, and take action to be, a part of the solution. So, Autistic pride? Yeah, by whatever definition.

I am a very proud Autistic woman. I guess if I were to base that statement on an anal semantically correct definition, I would probably not feel comfortable stating this. But if you look at how the meaning has evolved when used by different disenfranchised groups in the recent past claiming it i.e Gay Pride, Black Pride, etc., and you google what these particular groups meant by pride, without a doubt, I am filled with overflowing Autistic Pride.

You see, I not only accept my neurology, I embrace it. I KNOW that I am not "less than" and I wear my Autistic Pride jewelry as an opening to shout it out to the world. And if there are no comments on my jewelry [or t-shirt] I will still find a way to bring it up. And do a little educating.

I am just a little old lady. I have endured great suffering because of being Autistic. I have met hundreds of young people who have lived a nightmare because of the treatment they were put through. I want to be, and take action to be, a part of the solution. So, Autistic pride? Yeah, by whatever definition.

Here's the thing I don't like. It's the "disenfranchised" mentality that bothers me. It even is getting tired with the groups you mentioned above. I don't want it to come down to the law or governments deciding that I'm a "historically disenfranchised minority", I really don't want the government to favor/disfavor us in any way as an identity group. The more I see a few people on here saying how wrong or evil NT's are or about "privilege", the more I'm seeing an analogy between the mainstream autism community and other "disenfranchised" identities.

If your definition of disenfranchised is being stripped of power, then hell yeah, I have been disenfranchised in a myriad of ways. Take stimming for example. I stim. A lot. To think clearly. To relax. To allow the creative juices to flow. To figure out answers to questions and anything to do with math skills. I stim. When I stim I am never cruel, terribly loud or in any way dangerous. But I come across as weird. And I have paid dearly for it. And stripped of my power.

The vast majority of Autistic people have been sexually abused. That is something else that is common when a persons' power has been taken from them.

When humans get into a group their overall IQ drops to marginally above the lowest person in the group.

Stress lowers thought processing and immune system response.

Groups of people and being close them increases chance of physical, emotional, and psychological trauma.

Loose conclusion, the spectrum defends us from our own species so we can continue the growth as the rest devolve.

I'm proud because I have lived in 6 states, travelled through the entire lower 48, and in that time I have never met a single person that has said they even know someone like myself. Most people are one in million. We are now one in a billion.

In my life I made the best of the retail jobs I was stuck in. A store where I worked had a picture frame that said, "If you aren't doing what you like then like what you do." It was nice to have a job that I left at the workplace and didn't take home with me. I also worked among people of different social classes, different races, different religions, different sexual preferences. I became much more accepting and tolerant than 99% of my friends. That's something I'm proud of. And after being diagnosed I have a new purpose in life being an advocate and activist.